The search engine marketing (SEM) industry has grown to support a few major events. Perhaps the largest and most well known of these events is the series, Search Marketing Exposition (SMX), organized by the publishers of Search Engine Land.
Last week, I had the opportunity of attending SMX East 2011 in New York City as an exhibitor. Aside from the awkwardness associated with having the largest and most unkempt beard in the place, I had an amazing time talking with other agencies, vendors, and potential clients. Needless to say, there was a lot of opportunity to “geek out” about search.
However, there were equally as many opportunities to answer questions from newcomers to the industry. To my surprise, the most common question asked was: “What does Slingshot SEO do?” Read more »
In July of 2010, Overstock.com acquired the rights to O.co and officially began the process of rebranding in January 2011. In terms of pure branding, this seems like a reasonable move; i.e., Overstock.com no longer simply carries “overstocked” products so the old name no longer makes total sense. From a usability perspective, there are now fewer characters to type in the web address, which is a bonus for users on mobile devices. While the change seems reasonable from a branding and usability perspective, users may wonder why they are still directed to www.overstock.com even though they typed in O.com? Further, Slingshot clients may wonder if moving from a .com to a .co is a good SEO move.
Breaking it Down
For those that aren’t familiar, TLDs (top level domains) like .com, .net, and .org, are considered generic and denoted by the initialization gTLD. Generally, these are the most common types seen by users in the United States while browsing the Internet. In addition to these gTLDs, there are country specific ones denoted by the initialization ccTLD (country code top level domain). Examples of these include .us for the United States, .in for India, and .ca for Canada. In the case of O.co, this domain corresponds to the ccTLD of Colombia. Read more »
On June 28, 2011, Google launched a new social network called Google+ (Google Plus). At the time of this writing, it’s been entertaining humanity’s desire to add people to social “circles” for 21 days and has amassed over 10 million users (some estimates put Google+ at over 20 million users). Given that it took Facebook about two years to reach a similar user base, the growth rate of Google+ looks like an early indicator of success.
In order to achieve and maintain digital relevance, it is essential that web sites and brands make similar efforts to engage socially online with their visitors and clients. Considering Google+’s staggering growth rate and what that may mean for search, the CLASS practitioners here at Slingshot SEO have a few general observations and recommendations for clients.
Google+ is just for individuals – for now
Observation: At the time of this writing, there is no official way for a business to create a Google+ page. And, for the time being, Google will even delete accounts it identifies as businesses. However, it plans to launch a business-oriented update to Google+ before the end of the year and it is currently in beta testing. Read more »
Geek Out [geek-out] –verb Slang. To engage in a conversation of a highly technical nature, typically with some other members of the party you are with, completely (and usually inadvertently) alienating others in the process. ~ www.UrbanDictionary.com
There’s no fancy way to say it. There’s also not a technical term for it. However, when it comes to search, for better or worse, Slingshot SEO has a tendency to “geek out.”
In many instances, the ability to “geek out” or be highly technical is one of the “better” things about Slingshot. For example, say you’d like to optimize your site for search and it was written in Microsoft’s Classic ASP (which was cutting edge in 1998). No problem. Slingshot has experience optimizing Classic ASP sites. At the time of this post, one such site now ranks in the top two (2) results for a keyword worth over a million (global broad) searches a month. Read more »
No one starts a war–or rather, no one in his sense ought to do so–without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by the war and how he intends to conduct it. – Carl Von Clausewitz, Military Theorist
This is the fifth and final post in a series on Slingshot SEO’s C.L.A.S.S methodology. The first post, The “C” in CLASS, focused on how quality and original content gives your site the ability to rank for keywords and phrases. The second post, The “L” in CLASS, focused on how building links indicates relevancy to search engines and users. The third post, The “A” in CLASS, focused on how an efficient and aesthetically pleasing site architecture valued by search engines and users is an essential component of achieving and maintaining digital relevancy. The fourth post, The First “S” in CLASS, focused on how social signals that are valued by users and found by search engines are also essential to achieving and maintaining digital relevance.
In this electronic age we see ourselves being translated more and more into the form of information, moving toward the technological extension of consciousness. – Marshall McLuhan
This is the fourth post in a five part series on Slingshot SEO’s C.L.A.S.S methodology. The first post, The “C” in CLASS, focused on how quality and original content gives your site the ability to rank for keywords and phrases. The second post, The “L” in CLASS, focused on how building links indicates relevancy to search engines and users. The third post, The “A” in CLASS, focused on how an efficient and aesthetically pleasing site architecture valued by search engines and users is an essential component of achieving and maintaining digital relevancy.
Form follows function… – Henri Louis Sullivan, Architect
…that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union. – Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect
This is the third post in a five part series on Slingshot SEO’s C.L.A.S.S methodology. The first post, The “C” in CLASS, focused on how quality and original content gives your site the ability to rank for keywords and phrases. The second post, The “L” in CLASS, focused on how building links, specifically ones that are intended to add value for users, are an essential component of achieving and maintaining digital relevancy.
The details are details. They make the product. The connections, the connections, the connections. It will in the end be these details that give the product its life. – Charles Eames, Designer
This is the second post in a five part series on Slingshot SEO’s C.L.A.S.S methodology. The first post, The “C” in Class, focused on how quality and original content gives your site the ability to rank for keywords and phrases. Like all the elements of the CLASS Methodology, quality content is essential to achieving and maintaining digital relevancy.
Everything was beautiful. Nothing hurt. – Kurt Vonnegut
As a professional search engine optimization agency, Slingshot SEO has developed a deep understanding into the beauty and power of search algorithms. We’ve also gained a deep respect for how these algorithms affect businesses. Because of this understanding and respect, we abide to the strict rules of the algorithm when working to ensure digital relevancy for our clients. Adhering to the rules manifests as top rankings. Therefore, like modern doctors, Slingshot takes a Hippocratic approach to SEO: “do everything that may help and nothing that may harm.” Because of this approach and the results we achieve by never straying from it, clients continue to bring us web sites to receive our healing touch. They come because we succeed without harming or breaking the rules, and, like our Indiana brother Kurt’s observation, we hope their experience working with us is both beautiful and painless.
In SEO, ranking fluctuations are part of the business. Similarly, extreme ranking drops are also part of the business. However, as professional SEO consultants we realize our response to these occasional setbacks is what sets us apart from lesser SEO practitioners. Further, as professionals, we should have both the processes in place to address rankings problems and the stomachs to handle the stress. For now I’ll spare you the details on the state of my gut. However, I would like to relate to readers a ranking issue we addressed recently, how we responded, the solution we devised, and a process we added moving forward. Hopefully, this exercise will increase communication and influence expectations between SEOs and clients.
Our most recent and difficult ranking issue was a 72 hour period where a client’s site suddenly fell completely out of Google’s index after ranking on the first page for months. During our scramble to understand why, we first spent about half an hour looking at the page and scrutinizing it for major flaws. It looked good. We then asked the client if they had made any changes to their site. They hadn’t. So, with the first steps of our crisis plan already taken, we then spent the next 48 hours calculating link attrition and scrutinizing backlinks. With no Google engineer or supercomputer at our disposal, our heads were in the “link clouds” and nothing made absolute sense. We simply had rankings and then we didn’t.
the rights to O.co and officially began the 
a similar user base, the growth rate of Google+ looks like an early indicator of success.